Helen Scott is a 7th grade student who just won an essay

competition. The essay prompt was “What does patriotism mean to you?” Mrs. Flores was the one who told the class to give the essay a try. Helen then decided to take part in the activity. She is not sure what she wants to do with the money, save it for now. Helen says she has a big

family that loves the outdoors.

What does patriotism mean to me? I think patriotism is putting others and your country before yourself. It is showing love for your country. Celebrating the ones who save us and who serve your country. Patriotism is showing pride for your country. People that protect us and serve are wonderful, amazing, and, brave because they are the ones who keep our country free. Freedom means we have the choices we deserve and have the opportunity to live without fear of being different than your neighbor and to make the choice of being friends with another race without being prosecuted. We have the choice because Martin Luther King Jr, because of his “I have a dream speech” he let his patriotism shine through and he changed the worlds history forever and I thank him. One day I will join the military to protect, serve, and, fight for my country. There are a few holidays we celebrate; we celebrate the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and, Veterans Day. We are taking pride in those who are very special in there devotion and sacri-fices they make to keep our country free. Being patriotic is what I strive for and what I wish others would try to strive for to. I am proud of my country and everything it stands for to. I am very fortunate to have been born here in this land that is free, where you work hard and you can accomplish any dream you can dream of. Patriotism loves your country, being loyal, faithful, and proud of anything and everything it will accomplish. It is up to me, you, and the citizens to make sure our country stays this way. For our beautiful flag to stand tall and for all those amazing people to sing our national anthem. I hope this essay gets out to the world and encourages all those young kids who still have their whole life ahead of them. We are very lucky to be free all because we have patriotism. That is what patriotism means to me.

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Newsletter Staff:

Graphic Designers: Marissa Olivarez & Brianna Enriquez

Headline: Devon Polzin

Sport Reporters: Noah Gar-cia, Francisco Gonzalez, Jackie Melchor

Featured Staff/Students: Sasha Sherwood, Tristan Lara, Braiden Riddley, Jo-seph Lara, & Estephanie Cano

Opinion Poll: David Lopez

Clubs: Thomas Milone

Photographers: Jacob Ste-phenson & Jeremy Brangac-cio

Games: Joshua Jones

Student Life: Liam Scribner & Shannon Kenney

Teacher: Ms. Hendrickson

What’s in this Edition:

Page 1: Scott & Rodriguez Essay, Spelling Bee, & MLK March

Page 2: Sport Pages

Page 3: Student Life

Page 4-5: Staff / Student Interviews—Clubs

Page 6: Opinion Poll, Games, & Stu-dent Life

Roster: Dillon DeLaCruz, Adam Belloc, Brice Gay, Hunter Chavez, Carlos Alvarado Rivera, Shamus Leach, Justin Ybarra, Davin Soto, Gabriel Coye, Chris Tapia, Jacob Quinones, & Aiden Miller.

Mr. “G” is a 7th grade basketball coach. He has been coaching for 6 years at Cactus Middle School. His expectations for the team are to have each player become better basketball players, and a better person. He enjoys watching high school and college basketball. He also enjoys professional football. Mr. G states that the players will need to improve in all aspects of their game and thinks the key is to just know what good, organized basketball looks like. He is looking forward to each player develop into dangerous ballers. Mr. “G” believes the Seattle Seahawks will win the Super Bowl 21-17. His favorite thing about Valentines Day is the candy.

Mr. Miller is the 7th grade baseball coach. It’s his first year coaching at Cactus Middle School. He has been involved in Casa Grande Little League as a coach and a board member for the past 5 years. He says the team will be undefeated. Mr. Miller is a big supporter of all the Arizona teams. He says a coach is just a teacher. He says he is lucky to have 11 young men that already have a love for the game. Mr. Miller will invite other adults who have more experience, to help the team excel. He also says if the players recog-nize what they did wrong it is much more effective than to scream at them. Mr. Miller and his wife have been married for nearly 20 years. His wife works in Coolidge schools. They have 10 children, 6 boys and 4 girls. Two of his boys attend Cactus as 8th graders, Seth and Zaac Miller. His son Deric, who is 17 years old, also went to Cactus. Two of his sons are six graders at Ironwood who play sports at Cactus, Aiden and Noah. Mr. Miller’s favorite thing about Valentines Day is that it is close to President’s Day and then we have a long weekend from school.

Mr. X is an 8th grade baseball coach. He has coached here at Cactus Middle School for two seasons. He has won two championships for soccer. His favorite sports to watch are Golf, Soccer, and Ice Hockey. Mr. X’s also likes the Detroit Tigers and Saint Louis Cardinals. This year Mr. X expects the baseball players to have fun, develop sportsmanship, and play to their highest ability. He also expects the team to stay focused on the field and to keep their heads in the game. Mr. X hopes to inspire the team to be champions on the field, and in the classroom. Mr. X’s favorite thing about Valentines Day is to treat his lady like a princess. Mr. X predicts that the Seahawks will win the Super Bowl by 10 points.

Roster: Jason Agag, Tristan Bolanos, Nic Calderon, Angel Campa, Aaron Cas-tro, Ed Gutierrez, Joseph Lara, Gabriel Matthews, Seth Miller, Jose Sanchez, Erik Soto, Alonzo Urias, Aydan Vasquez, and Ry-land Lewis Wilcox.

Skylar Redd, Veronica Perez, Brooke Lorefice, Danisha Neal, Cecelia (Nichole) Huerta, Adya Perez, Victoria Rodriguez , Raven Jose, Evelyn Gonzalez , & Shey-enne Donlay.

Jada Willis, Zeandra Gipson, Kelsi Moody, Mikah Doty, Sariya Pitts, Maria Garcia, Jasmina Lopez, Seyenne Corney, & Hiilei Sato

Mr. Spooner has been coaching at Cactus for 6 years and this is his 18th sea-son coaching. He expects to win the Signal Peak and to improve tremen-dously throughout the year. His favorite teams are Oklahoma Sooners, Chi-cago Bears, and the New York Yankees. His team needs to work on ball han-dling, shooting, team defense, and overall understanding the game. The most outstanding players would be Veronica Perez and Nichole Huerta. He thinks the Broncos will win the Super Bowl. For Valentine’s Day, he loves the price gauging on flowers and the insane amount of money he’s expecting to spend each year on candy and Hallmark cards.

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Mr. Anderson’s favorite sports to watch are football and rodeo. He says that he’s almost too old to play but he likes to coach football anyways. Mr. Anderson’s expectations for the wrestling team this year are to keep their winning tradition at Cactus in place by win-ning the Signal Peak again, and for the wrestlers to show improvement throughout the season. The team needs improvement on all the basic wrestling skills ; takedowns, break-downs, and half Nelson’s. Mr. Anderson’s favorite part of Valen-tine’s Day is the afternoon. He

thinks that the Broncos will go all the way to the Super bowl. Mr. Anderson’s wife Mrs. Melody subs here at Cactus and his daughter Kennedy is a college student at CAC, and works at Jimmy Johns. He plans on showing his school spirit by wearing his Cactus gear and trying to make Cactus interesting. “GO BRONCOS!’, says Mr. Anderson.

Wrestling Roster—Brady Archer, Derien Beauregard, Jose Canez, Fernando Chis-chilly-Cardiel, Romello Cruz, Dylan Goodsell, Anthony Hammer, Noah Harry, Joshua Hart, Erik Hernandez, Shawn Jackson, Justin Juan, Jayvion Kelly, Dominick Lamantia, Joshua Lopez, Nathan Matthews, Jaysen Kelly, Gilberto Rey, Elijah Sanchez, Dustyn Sandsness, Henry Scholes, Hunter Stewart, Monica Subia, Andres Testa, Ty’Darrius Wallis, Dylan Whitmer, and Alysha Ziegler

In Ms. Battaglia’s class, they are doing an assignment called “Daily Secret” based on spies in the Cold War. The point of the assignment is to keep a secret from others including the teacher. But, the teacher rewards the people who share someone’s secret with the teacher. If a person’s secret is given then they have to answer a question about the Cold War, and is rewarded for an-swering correctly. If they can guess correctly on who the spy is, then they have to answer the question. It is supposed to recreate the atmosphere of America during the Cold War, which was a war of secrets and spies.

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The Super Bowl Shuffle is a fun way to incorporate football in a exer-cise activity that works the body.

Mr. Sanchez is holding his annual salsa contest. Where students bring in their salsa creations and the students judge who's they think is the best.

Jacob Lara’s favorite classes are Physical Education and Social Studies because he likes to exercise and have fun. In Social Studies he likes to learn new things about history. Jacob’s favorite teacher is Mr. Phillips. In Physical Education Jacob likes to talk to his friends Jusan, Anthony, Shamus, and Chris. He says his family is awesome and his mom and dad always give him great advice, and his brother always gives him confidence during sports also his little sister tries to cheer him up. Jacob’s favorite vacation was to Disney Land in California because his whole family went with there aunt’s uncle’s and cousins. Jacob said they got on tons rides and had fun. He was born in Scottsdale, Arizona on April 5, 2001. He thinks the Seattle Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl because they have a great defense and a great running back. Jacob says his favorite thing about Valentine’s Day is seeing all of the people that are happy. We asked Jacob “WE ARE CACTUS”... how do you show school pride and he answered by wearing his honor roll pins and getting good grades.

Jose Calderas is an 8th grade Cactus student. He likes spend-ing his time playing football. Jose says he has a very re-spectful and nice family. His favorite sports are football and soccer. His favorite vacation was when he went to Mexico to visit his aunts and uncles. His favorite thing about Valen-tine’s Day is the Valentines candy.

Mrs. Jones grew up in a small town in Northern California until she was a teenager. After that, she moved to East Los Angeles County area, where she went to middle and high school. Mrs. Jones favorite subject is music, but she loves teaching math because it builds long life confidence in many aspects of life. Mrs. Jones went to college at Humboldt State University State and ended up graduating from U of A. Mrs. Jones has three children. Mrs. Jones shows her school pride by keeping a smile on her face. She thinks 49ers will win the Super Bowl. Her favorite thing about Val-entines Day is the chocolate. She says ‘I think we could all agree to also change the name to Choco-late Day’. Mrs. Jones would like to take the oppor-tunity to say dark chocolate is her favorite type of chocolate.

Mr. Phillips grew up in Chesapeake, Ohio and he went to Chesapeake Elementary School, Chesapeake Middle School, and Chesapeake High School. He attended Marshall Univer-sity for his undergraduate degree. Then he went to University of Phoenix for his master’s degree. Mr. Phillips favorite sub-ject to teach is volleyball, lacrosse, and weightlifting. His favorite vacation spots are Myrtle Beach, SC and Victoria Islands which is off the coast of Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada. Mr. Phillips says his beautiful wife Ruthie teaches 4th grade at Ironwood Middle School. He has two niece’s one nephew and another niece on the way. We asked Mr. Phil-lips…”We are Cactus”...so how do you show your school pride? He said by expecting nothing short of his students’ absolute best in the classroom and in the Cactus community. Mr. Phillips said the Broncos and Seahawks will make it to the Super Bowl.

Mr. Freed grew up in Lexington, Illinois. Before he came to Cactus he taught all subjects in 6th grade at Mes-quite. Mr. Freed’s favorite topic to teach in science is plants. He enjoys the other great staff at Cactus. Mr. Freed shows Cactus spirit by volun-teering to help with other activities. His favorite part about Valentines Day is taking his wife out to her place of choice. In Mr. Freed’s opinion he says that it is “too close to call” to which teams are going to make it to the Super Bowl.

Hannah O’Neil’s favorite class is science with Mr. Freed. She likes to hangout with her friends, which are Faith, Grace, Shan-non, Ashley, Nnena, Kindra, Taitum, and Alyssia. The activities that she likes to do are cheer, gymnastics, and dance. Han-nah has an older brother and a younger brother. Her mom works at CAC, and her dad works in Phoenix. She has two favor-ite vacations. She spent seven day cruise to Caba, Mexico, she also spent two weeks in Hawaii. Hannah shows her school spirit by cheering on the cheer squad. Her favorite part of Valentine’s Day is eating chocolate and getting flowers.

Mrs. Pepper grew up in Mana, California but she didn’t like the summers there be-cause they were foggy and cold. Mrs. Pepper is married and also has a son in high school and a daughter that attends Cactus. She is a Language Arts teacher and her favorite thing to do is read great books. She had many jobs before she was a teacher. While she was in college she worked at Motorola and made microchips. We asked Mrs. Pepper how she shows her school spirit, and she answered, with “I show school spirit by showing enthusi-asm in my classroom”. We also asked her what’s her favorite thing about Valentine’s Day she said, “My favorite thing about VD is when the Valentines Day candy goes on sale at Target the day after”.

Skyler Wilson is a 7th grader at Cactus Middle School. She shows school spirit by being part of the Cheer Team and participating in all spirit days. Skyler lives in a big family, it consist of 5 people her sister Sydney, her brother Spyncer, her dad’s name is Zach, and her mom Amy. Skylers friends include Ashley, Samantha , Grace, Mady, and Aubrey. We asked what’s her best vacation memory. She said my best vacation memory is when my whole family went to Jamaica. We lived in a giant house with more than 10 rooms. We also asked her what’s your favorite thing about Valentine’s Day. She said my favorite thing about Valentine’s Day is receiving and giving candy.

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The money Spanish Club donated is going to Science Olympiad Team. They will buy supplies needed for their com-petition. Spanish Club donated $250 to the Science Olympiad team. Spanish Club raises money for field trips. Extra money raised goes back to the Cactus Family. We’ve donated various things to the school. Examples $200 for banner coyote country “school” flags, $300 for the canned food drive NJHS, $65 for the 6th grade to decorate their garden, $250 Sci-ence Olym-piad Team. S p a n i s h plans on donating up to $1,000 more to a c t i v i t i e s that lack funding.

Mrs. Warner grew up in New Orleans, LA, and earned a MED in school counseling. She has also worked as an Academic

Counselor for South University and a career counselor. Her favorite thing is having an opportunity to establish rela-tionships with students. Mrs. Warner wanted the Broncos to win. However, she is a Saints fan. She tries to encourage every student to be their best. Her favorite part about Valentines is the chocolate.

Dashia Ogo’s favorite class is Spanish with Mr. Sanchez, and her favorite teacher is Mrs. Dean. She likes to hang out with her friends Brianna and Nolayshia. When she’s at school she likes to read interesting facts. When she’s at home she likes to play video games and sing. Her family is crazy, fun, loving, caring, funny, and huge. Her favorite vacation is when her family and her went to South Carolina. She said she had so much fun. When people ask her what school she goes to she is proud to say Cactus. Her favorite part about Valentine’s Day is getting gifts for the people that she cares about.

She thinks that the Broncos will win the Super bowl. She loves to sing and play an instrument.

Cheerleading Cheerleading will be cheering on all of the students that earned Student of the Month at the recognition assembly (which will be hosted on January 31, 2014), and also at the wrestling matches here at Cactus.

CHESS Chess Club meets on Wednesday’s after school. Chess Club members are competing in the Ranking Order games in preparation for the School Tournament.

Drama Drama Club has practicing on the Cactus stage after school every Tuesday and Wednesday of each week in preparation of their upcoming performance.

NJHS NJHS will be working the SK Marathon on Feb. 9, 2014. They will be handing out water to all the runners. They are also starting a penny collect called, “Pennies for Leukemia.” Students who donate $3.00 or more can earn a free ticket to a Diamondbacks, Coyotes Hockey, or Phoenix Suns game.

Science Olympiad Science Olympiad meets during period B1, and will be preparing for the regional competition on February 8th. At the last event, Sofya Korkh and Brianna Riccomini placed 3rd! Science Olympiad was also very happy to receive a $250 donation from Spanish Club.

Student Council Student Council will host the Valentine’s Day Dance on February 14 in the gym from 3:45-5:15 for 6th, 7th, and 8th grad-ers. Not only will they be selling snacks, but they will also have a professional DJ. Tickets will be sold for $2 each. You can buy them from Mrs. Hale (B5), Mrs. Meier (C5) or Student Council members who will be selling them during CT Time.

YEARBOOK Yearbook Club meets on Monday’s after school. Members are working very hard, putting to-gether a fabulous yearbook that all students at Cactus will enjoy – Yearbooks can be pur-chased for $25. Get your copy soon!

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Yearbook—$25 Name on cover added with picture—$5 Current Events Insert added for—$3

Deadline: March 21

8th Grade Parents can purchase a “Congratulatory Mes-sage” expressing how proud they are and add up to two pictures for $25—there are only 36 spaces available. Deadline: Feb. 21

CANDY FEBRUARY FOOTBALL HEART LOVE PINK RED ROSE SUPERBOWL WHITE VALENTINE

F O A V Y W N U R E C E P K T V L X Y H G O B J H J A X S R G J H N W W D D N O F P O I M X U O N E Q G D E O E I C Z B D O T T K W R U Q G F F G B F E A Y Y U E E Z C B O W I M D D S R W S P B Y K Z N X R S R A X P K U R E O A J P U K F J I Y W L H Q L U T C P D T S A I L E B W T E L K R K A L H U R T B Y R E Z Y O D N I P X L Q W K S D C G D L V E M M V I E U N C P Y F W C K Y D N A C M H F I E L D I D J Z P B O R E D N K U H R B S A A F E B R U A R Y H L M R N W B F D V C V N A Y R G R R T E N N G I W X V N X O R S K B H U W C L A U H M P L S H Q V F A B Y Z R F F F E R O B E W X X H X Z J F M G T M M B A Z T E M W N B T V M R S U J W P C W L H E N X V M Y M T C R P V Z D K B N W C L F T V D O Q Y C D K S S R X C P M J D F U N Z Z T L Z V D J E H Q F Q Z N V G I K X X O E J N G C Z X R

1. What team do you think will win the super bowl?

• Seattle SeaHawks (Teachers-9) 71 57 103

• Denver Broncos (Teachers-23) 114 89 139

2. What would you like to receive for Valentines Day?

•Chocolate / Candy 31 50 93

•Card with a message 4 5 14

•Stuffed Animals 68 55 80

•Flowers 30 10 35

3. What’s your favorite candy for Valentines Day?

•Hershey Kisses 43 58 109

•Heart Lollipop 9 20 27

•Chocolate Hearts 20 28 64

•Sweet Heart candies w/messages 24 12 22

4. What’s your favorite Sweet Hearts saying?

•Be Mine 5 4 26

•Love You 27 21 36

•You Rule 33 31 36

•Be My Valentine 53 44 98

6 Find and count all the hearts printed in this issue—bring your total count to Ms. Hendrickson in the West Lab by Thursday, February 13—Sweet Treats Awarded to those with the correct count! Winners announced Valentine’s Day!

Check this and all Student Newsletters On-Line/in color at Cactus school Website